Ticketing – Part 1

We’ve studied the rules, know how many stops we can make on each continent and in which direction we can fly. We’ve counted up the airline miles to book the trip online and know where and when we want to go.

So now that we have our plan, it is time to see what the airlines will allow us to book. It isn’t looking good so far.

Day 1:

We try to book online, only to find that we can not book any stops after January 2015, nor can we use our airline miles. We will have to call the airline.

Day 2:

We call the airline, speak to an agent and are told we need to be transferred to a different department. Transfer occurs and we wait on hold for 77 minutes before giving up. The winter weather has cancelled a lot of flights and tied up all the booking agents.

Day 3:

We call the airline and are on hold less than 5 minutes. Hooray! We spend the next hour and a half blocking out an itinerary with the agent, but have to jettison several cities and rearrange the order due to limitations on flights using airline miles. With a draft itinerary, the agent now has to calculate the fees and taxes. Unfortunately, she can’t do this on the phone as it has too many stops on other airlines for her system. She asks us to call back in a couple hours and will hold the itinerary for 24 hours.